Greg Dwinell: Sing Hollies in Reverse, Jon Brion: Meaningless, Largo, Aimee Mann et al

I think that Largo is the best possible case scenario worldview-wise.

San Francisco got too expensive for me, and I decided on a whim to move near the club in Los Angeles. I saw that Aimee Mann, who got me through the heartache of my worst breakup with her debut solo album “Whatever,” played there every Tuesday for $8.

Recently, I realized that was probably a joke reference to her former band ‘Til Tuesday.

I only saw her one Tuesday, which was another joke on me. I think that was the last of her Tuesday residency, but I did notice that Jon Brion had a Friday residency.

Brion’s name was all over the credits of “Whatever.” He co-produced it, played at least ten instruments on it, and co-wrote two of the songs.
I only found it from one random viewing of the fun video for “I Should Have Known” on MTV. I didn’t know that Jon Brion played the ferocious Pete Townshend-like half rhythm, half lead guitar. His guitar work stings, but it is also wonderfully melodic.

That may have been the only time that video played on MTV. So for once, the joke wasn’t on me. It was more likely on Aimee. “Whatever” is as good as any album I’ve ever heard. It even had an amazing single, but it didn’t sell much due to legal disputes and label marketing inefficiency or lack of funds. I still challenged the “perfect sound forever” challenge by playing that CD endlessly as I partially healed. “Whatever “is better than the album featured here, but that is not the point.

“Whatever” should have been the great break out for women that Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville” was and maybe Alanis Morrisette’s “Jagged Little Pill.”

It came out a month earlier, but basically simultaneously. I know that Phair supposedly went up to Mann at a Lilith Fair (Phair) show and bowed down to her. “Voices Carry” was a huge women’s anthem in 1985, even if no one listened to it as they watched it on MTV.

This is my favorite clip of their work together, it’s my favorite look Aimee ever had, and I love Jon playing guitar with a drumstick.

They wrote that together, and I love these lyrics.

Acting steady, always ready to defend your fears

What’s the matter with the truth? Did I offend your ears?

By suggesting that a change might be a thing to try

Like it would kill you just to try and be a nicer guy

I didn’t even care that it was credited to the Melrose Place Soundtrack instead of the album “I’m With Stupid” that Brion produced. I liked “Melrose Place.” Evil people are fun when they are only on television.

I can’t tell you how much joy I got from the worst character on the show and the only character that lasted the whole span of the series.

Jon also had a great solo album, 1997’s “Meaningless,” which was also bungled by his record company. He still hasn’t released another, and I doubt he ever will, despite the urgings of his friends. He labeled his music “unpopular pop.”

Brion often played songs by the Beatles with whatever prominent artist happened to show up for his second set. These great musicians loved the perfectly constructed pop songwriting of the Fab Four, but none of them had achieved the same chart success with it. The Beatles released a ton of whatever they wanted that was usually melodic, and it always hit number one. That was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.

“Meaningless” was poorly marketed. Maybe it was hard to market, but perhaps the artist didn’t care much about it being marketed.

Sure, you can do this.

But usually, only after you do this first.

Largo was across the street from the famous Cantor’s Deli on Fairfax, which was a godsend to an insomniac like me because it was open 24-7, although I can’t remember if it closed on Jewish high holidays. Many people would go there to meet celebrities, and I met some there. There were bigger and better ones to meet at Largo.

Jon’s shows had no plan. They were sort of defiantly anti-plan. He would usually play a lot of Meaningless and other of his songs, some released somewhere or not at all despite their greatness.

Usually, the shows started with him at the piano doing something random like this.

Remember the Wizard of Oz line, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”?

Please pay no attention to the goof in the hat because it is me, and I have no idea what I am doing, but I’m having fun. Meanwhile, as Bill Hicks said, “Listen to the man play!”

There are many Beatles songs there in many styles. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” “We Can Work It Out (another joke, that was the song that played as I first got a clue my heart was about to be broken out of nowhere and it couldn’t be worked out), and the huge Beatle joke “You Know My Name, Look Up the Number. ” There may be references to other Beatles songs in there, but I’m not the super genius, Jon Brion is.  I can just listen. Well, at least when I’m not wearing my cool gear and trying to dance while sitting. I did a lot of dancing while sitting at clubs. No one was ever impressed or gave me credit for inventing it. I probably didn’t do it well enough.

“Look up My Number” is a rare Beatles song hard to share with young people because they have no idea that White Pages ever existed.

That wasn’t a half staged rap battle though, it came to Jon as it happened as he sat down at the piano.

He could play anything, in any style, at any time. Sometimes he’d come up short on a word or two of a lyric, but he was usually game for any request that wasn’t ELO. I found that out one night when I called out ELO’s “Evil Woman” half-jokingly, and he played two chords and stopped and joked that like a kung-fu master he was just teasing me. He never played ELO requests. Flanagan and I would tease him with them, and he’d bristle and tease us back.

I didn’t find out why until about five years later when I asked him. He thought that he and Jeff Lynne “tilled the same field” (both meanings), and perhaps had just only one musical grudge as a result. His only trace of ego, he thought he was better than ELO. That’s fine I love ELO, but I do love him more.

If you requested Brittany Spears as a joke, you had to be prepared to hear her, because it was often played. Once, he musically marveled that “Baby One More Time” and Oops … I Did It Again” Were the Same Song.

Largo was very tiny and served dinner. If I went for dinner, I always had spaghetti and meatballs. I always do that in Italian restaurants and the food was very good.

I was there for 2000, moved to Chicago in 2001, then moved back in 2002. When I first got back, I was amazed that the wonderful bartender I had a crush on, Ellen, remembered me, but it was that kind of a place. My first time  back was special, because she said, “Where have you been?” I had talked to her occasionally about her photography, the girl who broke my heart was a photographer, but mostly I’d say hello, she’d hand me a $4 Rolling Rock that I would drink until it got warm. I would give her a $5 dollar bill and listen to Jon. If I’ve remembered Ellen’s name wrong, I’m going to feel like a fool, but I am so a little more doesn’t hurt.

After the initial piano thing ended, it was usually chaos as Jon was flooded with requests, but it was sort of an unwritten rule that you would listen to the music unless cued to do something else. A lot of times, Jon would ask if someone could sing a certain song and if they could he would randomly bring them onstage to do so. Sometimes. he would have people with zero musical talent tapping glasses filled with different amounts of water. Most of the people that came out of the audience were pretty talented. Some may have been plants by him, but I’m not sure. The people tapping glasses definitely weren’t.

I saw him in Chicago and he set two people up from a way bigger crowd and made sure they had no piano talent and told them to do whatever they wanted on the black keys as he played along.

One night, he did realize he couldn’t quite remember all the lyrics to the Turtles’ “Eleanor” and asked Jim Boggia, who is also a great singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who loves ukelele, to come up and sing it, which he did really well especially the high pitched climax. I don’t think Jon knew Boggia, he just found out that someone could supposedly sing “Eleanor.” Boggia was in from Philadelphia. I went to another club a day or so later and saw him, and then I saw him open for Jon.

One night Fiona couldn’t remember Jon’s lyrics and couldn’t read them off his tiny CD paper insert from Meaningless especially in the dark, but Boggia apparently doesn’t see that well and carries around a big magnifying glass lent it to her for at least one song.

I met a lot of celebrities there smoking outside, which was the one advantage of smoking laws especially in a place like Los Angeles where it is warm. The nicest was Mitch Hedberg, but almost all of them were nice and approachable.

The best was a guy named Greg Dwinell, who wasn’t a celebrity. I always wanted to be part of that artist collective but didn’t have any real talent to do so. He didn’t either but did join it, and he gave me a lot of inside information even though I always assumed there was a room in the back where they all hung out during downtime. I never heard about that place.

The way he joined the collective was with the money he had. I don’t know where he got his money, but he had some and used it to release music under the banner eggBert records, which must have been an in-joke, but I never asked him what it referred to because we mostly talked music.

He told me he was close friends with John Easedale of Dramarama, a guy who like Aimee and others I saw at Largo like Aimee’s husband Michael Penn, Elliot Smith, Evan Dando was deemed a one-hit wonder.

A lot of people I met and saw there were no hit wonders.

Greg Dwinell decided to use his money wherever it came from to let the musicians he liked release music. Most of them all worshiped three-minute pop singles, especially from the ’60s, and produced similar ones.

I looked at eggBERT’s website and saw a ton of one-hit wonders I saw and worshiped in college recording for him. Mostly, on tribute albums to other bands.

I think his most successful was a Hollies tribute called Sing Hollies in Reverse. His records all seemed to pay tribute to unrecognized artists, but when he did a Bee Gees tribute album it was mostly in tribute to their pre-disco less heralded work. This was probably completely intentional, but I never really asked him about it.

Money was never made on those records, money was lost. Money was lost by design.

That’s Jon paying tribute to a song that was pretty much exactly three minutes long in about eight minutes. Possibly a joke, but probably what he felt like doing that day, and Dwinell let Jon and everyone else do whatever they wanted. The three minutes of pop is there, but there is a lot of insanity there too, which Jon did a lot of live, but not often on record. Greg Dwinell would often tap me on the shoulder on what could have been seen as Jon’s rare self-indulgent moments and say, “There is the genius I like, there.”

Here is the track list to Sing Hollies in Reverse.

“King Midas In Reverse” – performed by The Posies
“Carrie Anne” – performed by Tommy Keene
“Look Through Any Window” – performed by The Loud Family
“The Air That I Breathe” – performed by Steve Wynn with Eric Ambel
“Pay You Back With Interest” – performed by Mitch Easter
“You Know He Did” – performed by Cub
“I’m Alive” – performed by Kristian Hoffman
“Water on the Brain” – performed by The Flamingoes
“Jennifer Eccles” – performed by E
“On a Carousel” – performed by The Jigsaw Seen
“Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)” – performed by John Easdale
“Step Inside” – performed by Bill Lloyd
“After the Fox” – performed by Loser’s Lounge
“You Need Love” – performed by The Wondermints
“So Lonely” – performed by The Sneetches
“I Can’t Let Go” – performed by Continental Drifters
“Touch” – performed by Carla Olson
“Heading for a Fall” – performed by Andrew Sandoval
“Bus Stop” – performed by Material Issue
“Dear Eloise” – performed by Shakin’ Apostles
“Sorry Suzanne” – performed by Jon Brion

Lot’s of artists who had maybe one hit like E (Eel’s “Novocaine for the Soul),” who I saw open for Jon a lot, Dwinell’s friend Easedale (Dramarama’s “Anything Anything”), Material Issue (“Valerie Loves Me”).

I listened to Mitch Easter and his Let’s Active in college, but I don’t think there were hits. Pretentiously, I once played a Let’s Active song on a college radio show in 1986 and said the tired cliche, “In a better world this would have been a hit.”

Now I say, “Who cares what was a hit?”

A lot of those artists like Tommy Keene I know. I know that the Wondermints helped resurrect both Brian Wilson’s Smile (both his lost album and the look on his face) and his career. A lot of them I don’t know, but Greg Dwinell did.

Jon would play for about sixty minutes, take a break, and play another 30 minutes, mostly joined by others he was producing or others who just wanted to see him and join in. During the last 30 minutes, the spotlight was almost always on them and not Jon.

I saw Peter Buck there not playing guitar, but bass with the band Whiskeytown. Ryan Adams was probably there, but I’m not sure, because I had no idea at the time who Ryan Adams was. They threatened to play Bob Dylan’s 11-minute gangster homage “Joey.” I think they played about three minutes of it.

Benmont Tench, Tom Petty’s pianist was almost always there.

One night, I had a rare first date with a beautiful girl, and Tom Petty was at the table next to us. He was working with Jon on an album but didn’t want to perform. A lot of people called out Petty requests, the girl I was with asked for “American Girl.” Jon respectfully ignored them all.

I always have trouble asking girls out. I think she made it easy because she heard I had some money at the time. I didn’t get a second date even though she got to sit by Tom Petty. I later heard it was mostly because I had no clue how I was going to continue to make money.

There was almost no show that I saw John do that was without a John Lennon song, except notably one December 8th. There were many ignored Lennon requests. Flanagan requested one but was ignored. Jon said, “Why don’t we just remember what a cool fucker he was instead?”

Jon loves profanity. It’s marketable now, although perhaps not in his genre.

Not many people throw in the word motherfucker into their harmonies. I love seeing someone “Walking Through Walls” in a time when I see most people walk into the same wall over and over again.

Greg Dwinell filled me in on Jon’s post-Aimee muse, Fiona Apple. Everyone thought that she was a spoiled brat, but he told me that she wasn’t and that Jon loved her and would do almost anything for her.

She was at Largo a lot. When she sang she mostly sang old standards. She was shy and tiny, and almost always scared that she would forget the lyrics to songs. No one especially Jon cared, but she did. I once saw what most would call a “bum” confront her and ask to trade hats, and she politely told him with a joking smile, “.., but I like mine so much better.”

My friend from college I did my radio show with once gave me his favorite hat, but I soon decided that it looked better on him than me, and gave it back.

He’s wearing it there. We’re no longer friends for reasons I don’t understand. I don’t like the Cleveland Browns anymore because they are disloyal and greedy. The Beatles sang of love, sharing, and working together, but were broken up by money after being on the verge of bankruptcy by being too artistic. For a while, they no longer got along and were forced to learn how to be businessmen instead of artists. Enough money should be enough money for everyone.

I have a lot of live Jon Brion music or unreleased music from sharing that I got for free over a few years. Kids today seem to be able to get millions of songs for free almost instantly.

I think that Jon wanted Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine to be their masterpiece. He took her to the famed Abbey Road where the Beatles recorded to make it.

I heard the title track first in some form like this.

Tiny, shy, and nervous. More man behind the curtain jokes. Jon is almost always the man behind the curtain.

At some point during the recording of the album, someone I think referenced this Tom Petty lyric:

Their A&R man said “I don’t hear a single”

The album wound up being remixed and redone with another producer.

I have Jon’s version. I think Fiona said that she liked the released version better. I’m pretty sure there were no recriminations, they still love each other,  and they still sang together at Largo after it happened.

I smoked with a lot of people there. Badly Drawn Boy, Ian Hunter, various other fans. Greg died of cancer in 2003 from esophageal cancer probably from smoking.

I still smoke, but no longer have the money to go to Largo and no longer get out much so I should quit. I started at 28 after that girl broke my heart and in some ways, it was the dumbest thing I ever did, but I may never have healed if I never started. I wouldn’t have met and listened to those people. It’s dumb to kill yourself early, but it’s worse to never really live at all.

Almost every name big or small was nice to me there nice and approachable. I often showed up for just the last 30 minutes and would be turned away from Nirvana, watch people be turned away for 15 minutes and then get in somehow. Mostly due to persistence, once after Ian Hunter smoked with me and asked the doorman to let me in on a night that was in way too much demand because not only he was there, but Neil Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House was too (both sort of one-hit bands).

John C Reilly was there and sang an Everly Brothers song by himself. Flanagan sang some Irish song in some form with some sort of skill. Ian Hunter played. Neil Finn played with Jon and sang “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and “I’m So Tired.” He apologized to John because he forgot the third verse and John laughed and said that there was no third verse. Finn played something of his own, but it wasn’t one of his hits.

Jon still has no hits, but he has written and produced enough great music to fill a gigantic box set that probably will never be compiled. If it is, it will likely be done by friends to sort of spite him.

Except for his one flop, nothing else had his name on it, except for the occasional movie score. Movie scores never really sell. No one really knows him or what he’s up to. He does whatever he wants, from what I know can’t even open an internet browser, but can use Pro Tools or defiantly not use Pro Tools. If people want to work with him or hire him, they come to Largo or they come to him. I have no idea how much money he has, but apparently enough.

One celebrity I met who wasn’t nice or approachable was Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielson. I stopped him at his pizza place in Chicago and asked him if he had heard Jon’s version of his song “Voices.”

He said that he liked what had been done with the harmonies, and I told him that Jon worshipped him. Rick said, “well I don’t worship him” and walked away. I think that I insulted him by implying that I liked Jon better, but he had a right to be miffed because obviously, I did.

Maybe Rick was mad that someone turned his brief pop song into the longest track on his solo album. Who knows? It’s sort of funny to me, and I’m the fool.

I did get a lot of music for free from sharing, but that was the only way I could get it. Jon doesn’t sell it. Jon doesn’t even know most of it is out there. I don’t like the Grateful Dead’s music but I do like that they didn’t care about bootlegging very much. I think that Jon is oblivious. He also has a lot of copies of Meaningless left and when I saw him in Chicago, they were being given away at the door to people who had already paid to see him.

I’m not sure if it was a tribute to Greg Dwinell (although this is), but at some point, I didn’t have the money to live near Largo anymore. It has moved, but if I had the money, I would still move back there. I pledged to do my own selfish Robin Hood because I can’t live without music, movies, or whatever. I do steal, but I do my best to support the smaller artists I like by buying whatever they release wherever they can most profit from it.

This was the only adult picture of Greg Dwinell I could find, which saddens me because there are tons of pictures of everyone else all over the internet

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I told this to Doug Stanhope once, who is always nice to his fans even though he sort of is creeped out by his fans. He tells people to steal his work. He lives in the cheapest artist community he has been able to find and wants mostly to be left alone. He said jokingly, “You’re an idiot!” I was because I was bragging about my pledge and sort of wanted credit,  but it made me buy even more stuff from Stanhope.

It was a dumb thing to say to a guy who often says, “Hard work is fine if its a work of passion but just to work hard to buy shit to impress people. You’re a fucking loser” and “Whatever your problems are, keep in mind that you die at the end of all this. Let’s get out there, brutalize ourselves and laugh at those certain pricks who take it seriously like there is any way to win in all this.”

I saw or heard at Largo off the top of my head: Patton Oswald, Beck, Badly Drawn Boy (who drinks a lot of Guinness and told me he was Damon 1 and the Damon from Blur was known as Damon 2 although it didn’t seem out of ego I think it was birthday), Mary Lynn Rajskub (who I think may have broken Jon’s heart and is much sexier in person than on 24 or anywhere else onscreen), Jack Black (who sung the lyrics to Star Trek that I didn’t know existed), Paul F Tompkins (who I once saw do a routine about a guy who brought a big cockatoo to a party as a social device, which was funnier to me because I was at a party with that guy and his bird. He probably met a girl and I didn’t. I can’t take care of a bird, so I’m not getting one), and a ton of other big names and nobodies who were mere spectators like me.

The only other artist I’ve seen Brion crack on besides Jeff Lynne was due to his love of Les Paul. He told a story about going to see Les Paul. Les pulled Slash out of the crowd and the crowd went crazy, and to Jon, Slash was just running pentatonic scales, while Les let him play for the crowd for about half of the show. Jon wanted to see Les Paul. I know that this happened, because I lived a block away from Les Paul’s residency in New York and the night I saw him, he let almost everyone onstage to do something even Danny Devito. Jon talked a lot about all of Les Paul’s musical inventions, the solid body electric guitar, various pedals and studio wizardry, and his playing skill.

Jon often takes random requests and uses pedals to play random requests as multitracked Les Paul styled instrumentals. The night Ian Hunter was there I asked for Les Paul and he played Hunter’s “All the Young Dudes” that way. We all want to see Les Paul, especially now that he is gone, but maybe for one and only one second, Jon forgot the best reason to idolize Les Paul. Like Jack Benny who wasn’t cheap in real life or on running his show, Les Paul could share the spotlight. He mostly gave the spotlight to his wife Mary Ford.

There is no reward for this kind of behavior. Stanhope is right we all die in the end. It’s meaningless.

Oil tankers in the National Guard
I came to meet you, my car died in your yard
Why turn the key?
There’s so much here to see

These are my memories
Of precious places, precious things
That were meaningless before
We’d seen them together

Old hinges squeaking in the rain
That hotel by the highway where we stayed
There’s something every hour
Who needs the Eiffel Tower

When we’ve got memories
Of precious places, precious things
That were meaningless before
We’d seen them together

The pen, the car
The paint, the pier
The moon and star
The message clear

Liberty raised her hand to us
As if to say “It’s OK, live today, live today”

I said “Don’t leave me, don’t break the tide”
Then I left you and time went rolling by
And here’s what I can’t stand

I know that every landmark
Triggers memories

Of stupid places and silly things
That were meaningless before
We’d seen them together

Were meaningless before
We’d seen them together
They were meaningless before
We’d seen them together

Lots of jokes and double meanings very similar to”Ironic.”

It’s kind of a bitter breakup song, but it tells you to live today (maybe with disdain), and tells you how to find meaning.

He did learn from his heroes, who said it time and again, as simply as possible, mostly to be heard by children and in any language they liked.

John Lennon got criticized for having possessions, but he was just imagining and waiting for a plan. He’d have tossed it all away if he saw a decent plan, and he lived in some sort of tent in India until he thought he was being ripped off.

I’ve had ups and downs, but I’m mostly happy now. I was happiest the two years I lived near Largo.

You can probably find most of the content on YouTube or buy it online. I’d recommend doing both.

I don’t have a great plan, but you’ve gotta start somewhere.